Angry Planet - Inside the Occult Neo-Nazis Killing People in America

Episode Date: March 12, 2018

From the Silver Legion to the Aryan Nation, the U.S. has had its share of fascist organizations but its never had anything quite like Atomwaffen Division. Grown and organized online, the group has been linked to five murders and a bomb plot in the past eight months. The group is so extreme that even prominent leaders of the Alt-Right have denounced it.This week on War College, journalist Jake Hanrahan takes us through what the group believes, what it wants, and what it might be willing to do to get it.You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. You can reach us on our new Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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They're much more extreme. To give you some idea, they're not Holocaust deniers. They're Holocaust advocates, you know. So they'll say, well, maybe it did happen. Maybe it didn't. but, you know, we hope it did and we wished it was worse. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts, Matthew Galt and Jason Fields.

Hello, welcome to War College. I'm your host, Matthew Galt. Domestic terrorism is a growing threat in the United States. From online chatter to real-world violence, more individuals are taking violent political action in America. Recently, ProPublica published an ex-bizze on such one such group, Adam Woffin Division. Jake Hanrahan is one of the authors of that ProPublica story and is here with us today to talk about Adam Woffin Division and what makes them so dangerous and so unique. Hanrahan is a journalist and a filmmaker from the UK. His work has appeared in The Guardian and HBO's Vice News. Jake, thank you so much for joining us.

Brilliant, thanks for having me on. Let's go through the basics. What is the Adam Woffin Division? So the Atomophon division is, I think it can be best described as a semi-underground neo-Nazi militant group in America. But they're not like, you know, sometimes people talk about, oh, they're the alt-right, the most extreme version of the alt-right. That's not true. They're not alt-right. These guys are completely different.

They're much more extreme. To give you some idea, you know, they're not Holocaust deniers. They're Holocaust advocates, you know. So they'll say, well, maybe it did happen. Maybe it didn't. But, you know, we hope it did and we wished it was worse sort of things. So they're about as extreme as it gets. And they don't believe in turning up a protests and doing all this stuff.

They gather in small groups. They have 20 plus cells all over America. They do arms training. And yeah, they operate on this kind of lone wolf basis. So far, they're linked to five murders and a bomb plot. Right, because if you think about the alt-right, most of them, like you think Richard Spencer want to work kind of within the existing political system, right? Adam Woffend Division wants to destroy that existing political system.

That's exactly it. Yeah, they're nihilus in a way because, yeah, they don't want to, they don't even like America. You know, they burn the American flag. There's footage of them burning the Constitution. Yeah, they don't want to be a part of the system at all. They want to be completely outside of it. They're anarchists in that way, if you know what I mean? They're kind of like, I don't know.

Someone asked me, how would you describe them the other day? And I was like, they're like anarchist, neo-Nazi, occultist. Like, it's all in there, you know, it's pretty much the, accumulation of like the internet computer games generation, you know, on Nazism. And yeah, they're about as extreme as it gets. Okay, where does the name come from? So Atten Woffon can be translated as atomic weapons in German, so Atomwaffe division. One of their leader, he was connected to a bomb plot and the police believed that he was plotting to,

one of them was plotting to blow up a nuclear power station or something like that in America. I guess it kind of comes from around that. But, you know, atomic weapons, the end of the world is kind of their aesthetic. Another thing that makes them distinct from a lot of the other groups is that they have been linked to actual violent crime. Can we talk about some of those crimes? So, yeah, so the leader, one of their kind of co-founders or one of the guys that was close to the leadership when it started, Dylan, he converted to Islam.

But he stayed with an atom often because he was, you know, he believed in very extreme Salafi, you know, extremists on the Islam, which, Atomoff and Sam Woodward, the accused murderer of this boy in California, have been, you know, he said that they're pro-ISIS. They prefer to have a world like ISIS wants, as opposed to, you know, so-called liberal world that they hate so much. So this kid got into extremist Islam and he ended up shooting two of the main members of Atomwaffe and dead. So that was the first two murders. He said that they were planning to kill Muslims and that's why he did it. But there's, you know, there's, you know, there's, you know, No one really was quite sure what happened there. And then when the police raided the house, he was living with Brendan, who was the very founder of Atomofen. And they found TATP homemade explosives in the basement. You know, I think Brandon admitted that was his.

So he was, you know, building explosives. And then there was Nick, this kid, Nicholas Giampa, I think his name is pronounced. He shot his girlfriend's parents dead when they found out that he was a neo-Nazi, kind of tried to stop her seeing him. So he went in and shot both of them. dead. And now there is the most recent one, which is the one where I started to, you know, really start investigating these guys after finding out that he was a member of Atomoff. Sam Woodward in California, he stabbed a boy called Blaise Bernstein, who was gay and Jewish,

and he'd gone to school with Sam. And then he was home for the holidays, met Sam in a park. He was found dead a few days later, stabbed 20 times and buried in a shallow grave. Originally the police were saying this might be a hate crime. You know, Sam seems to be quite right wing. And then after I've been looking into Atomofen for about two years now and after all that, someone actually contacted me because they knew that I was, you know, quite interested in Atomoff and said, look, you need to look at this kid. He's not just right wing. He's extreme. You know, he's neo-Nazi. He's a part of Atomoffin. And I thought, come on, you know, like it came from like weird right-wing Twitter, like people on there and, you know, all these rumors and stuff. But

this kid actually knew him. So, you know, he provided me some evidence and then I found someone else. and then I found a third person, they all said the same thing. And as you can see in that big thread I did on Twitter, I kind of showed my evidence as I came across it to just show, look, this is what it is, and everybody could have a look. Right. We're going to link to your Twitter thread, which I think is pretty important for decoding all of this,

because it is very odd. And I think you kind of touched on one of the things that I think is really odd and interesting about it, darkly interesting, unfortunately. One of them had converted to Islam, and was going through this ideological shift and killed some of the other members. Their ideology is malleable. It seems like it's more about causing chaos than it is about any kind of particular adherence to any particular group or book. Is that true?

Well, it's, yeah, kind of. It's hard to pin down in a way because they follow a book called Siege, which is a collection of neo-Nazi newsletters by an old Nazi. I think he's like in his 60s now, a guy called James Mason. And some Atomoffam guys basically found his old writings. This was a guy that was a member of the American Nazi party. He was in like a militant group and he was writing these newsletters for years through the 80s called Siege. And it was basically pushing out the idea that neo-Nazi group shouldn't join the community,

shouldn't join the kind of political sphere. They should split up into small little cells, commit law and war for tax, commit terrorism. guerrilla warfare in a neo-Nazi with a neo-Nazi spin on it and that's basically what atom often follows so they put together siege they started selling it they made it all snazzy and that has basically become their bible now there are a lot of other far-right groups in america who also follow siege who are not part of atom often but them guys really brought that back out and yeah there is there's a lot of other so for example on their website now they have they say this is you know very specific reading you have to read this to be a part of us and there's some weird satanic books on

there um you know there's there's all sorts of stuff that you perhaps wouldn't think about i know some of them read like uh buddhist spiritualism uh looking through their their chats because we have their like 250 000 of their secret chats we've got and there's a lot of arguing as well i think in between what is and isn't atom often but again ultimately it is you know nihilistic chaos so that they can push forward with this neo-nazi revolution that they want. We keep calling them neo-Nazis. And I want to, you know,

we've had militias and neo-Nazi groups. We've got Aryan nation in America for years. What makes Adam Woffin different? What distinguishes them? So, I mean, I think atom-waffe, and, you know, as reprehensible as they are, they kind of see themselves and could be argued that's kind of the real deal of the neo-Nazi groups

because they're not out, they're not pantomime Nazis, you know, They're not wandering around and giving interviews and what have you with, you know, swastikers on their backs. They're secretive, or at least they were until, you know, our investigation came out. And they're doing arms training. They're collecting members in different states. They've got cells here, there and everywhere. They're a lot more organized than perhaps, you know, area nations you meet and get drunk and, you know, be racist and whatever.

These guys, you know, they had a rule. And we spoke to one former Atomoffan member. And he said the rule is you don't talk about active operations. so, you know, my active operations being actual attacks. The rule is they don't talk about that online. They only do that in person. They have what's called hate camps. So they have secret camps where they meet up.

They do arms training, ideological training, camping, orientering, that sort of thing. And they film that and they put it out online. And what I think they've done, which is quite clever of them in a very twisted way, is they really captured the kind of 2018-2017 Aesthetesthetes. you know, what is it is going to look cool to somebody. These are not like, you know, marching with kind of, you know, a stiff uniform type thing. These guys are like, you know, tapping into internet memes. And if you were a Nazi, you could look at them and think, well, that looks fun and that looks serious, you know.

Although their training videos are quite hilarious, you see them like firing automatic rifles really badly firing them into nowhere. But at the end of the day, you know, who else is doing that? They are the group that are doing that. And they have been linked to these murders, which in a twisted way has kind of made them more legitimate, I guess, in the eyes of the kind of neo-Nazi activist. Do we have any idea how many members there are or how many cells, how big this might actually be? So when we were doing the investigation, we know there's about 20, more than 20 cells, I'd say around 20. But again, we don't know exactly how many people are in each cell. but they are all across America

and I think they were in Texas, Virginia there was Washington, Nevada other places, California and they have these cells and they have various leaders of each cell and they kind of act autonomously and we think there were about 80 members

at one point but they could you know they could have been less they could have been a bit more but it was definitely around that number there has since been an internal split in Atom Woffen due to some of the new members or new leaders rather, being outed as Satanists and kind of fans of the occult,

which some of the other Nazis in the group didn't like. They said it was degeneracy. And that has kind of scuttled the whole thing at the moment. What's their leadership structure like? So at the top, they have a lad called John Denton. So he is, sorry, let me get the name right. Yeah, so at the top you have John Cameron Denton, who is the leader of Atomoff. and he took over after Brandon was sent to prison when he was caught with the explosives.

Now, Denton goes by the alias rape. So they all have aliases and to give you some kind of idea what this guy is, you know, his alias is rape. And he has kind of subordinates around him. He's in Texas. He runs the whole of Atomovim from his area. And then you have other individual leaders in each cell. We believe that Sam Woodward was a co-leader of the California cell, although we can't quite prove it yet. But we think that was quite likely that was possible.

So yeah, each cell across America as a leader, they'll report up. But overall, Denton or rape, you know, as his alias is, he decides what goes on. And then there are other people around him, Kimeh, there's a guy called Vass, loads of other people that decide or help him with the propaganda and the message of Atomovin and basically the aesthetic of how they look when they're projecting themselves across the internet and trying to get new members. Were you able to talk to Denton? and where is he now? Do we have any sense of how he's reacted to all the news? As far as we know, he's in Texas. Still, we tried to get in contact with him but couldn't.

We got in contact with one of their guys, Hubbsky. He turned, he tried to turn on them, basically. So he went by the alias commissar. His name is Michael Lloyd Hubbsky in Las Vegas. He said, you know, if you keep me out of it, then I'll give you information. But, you know, since he's, obviously we didn't do that. We're not going to make a deal with him.

And he's gone out. But since the article came out, we know that Atomofen has deleted all their servers, all their Discord servers, which is where we've got the messages from. And I've moved on to a different, more encrypted chat app, hilariously keeping in some of the people that, you know, they were considering a traitor before. So I don't think they quite know what's going on. I've had people trolling me. Like, there was a few guys on Twitter. I think it was, I reckon it was Denton, possibly. Just because the way he was talking and the things I've seen him say in the chats.

just saying really weird stuff like i don't know it's quite hilarious to me honest you know they were trying to say like what information do you want i'm going to leave and i was like obviously this is bullshit um and they just kind of you know went away but yeah i mean i think they're definitely quite shaken by it because you know the whole thing is kind of scuttled now they've been very very quiet on social media they've not said a word since um so yeah i imagine they're not too happy how did they get on your radar um that is a good question so primarily in my in my um work. Usually in the Middle East or Ukraine or whatever, covering conflict.

And I've always been fascinated in irregular warfare. So, you know, militias, paramilitaries, that sort of thing. I find it really interesting. And one day I was just looking into the malicious scene in America. I was thinking I'd love to do a documentary there one day about these groups. And I somehow, about two years ago, I think it was 2015, and I came across, it was very small at the time. I came across this Atomoffon on Twitter.

And I saw they were putting up some, like, really extreme leaflets. and then we're putting them up on universities and stuff like that and I thought wow that's that's quite different I haven't seen a group this extreme at the time they had a Twitter account and I contacted them and I said look I'd love to come to America and you know speak to you guys you know first and foremost what you believe in is I think is disgusting so you know let's get that out the way

but I want to come and hear what they've got to say and that was quite funny because when we got the chat logs we found out that they had this like weird plot to kidnap me if I did come and they were like yeah we'll put a bag over Han Randan's head and we'll take him here there and everywhere So that was quite hilarious to read that. But yeah, I guess I just being obsessive, I'm always like combing the internet, looking at these weird little groups and just tracking it obsessively because I enjoy it. You know, I just, weird as I am.

I find it quite fun to just follow every little detail. So for two years I was kind of following them. I had a little file, you know, my computer just thinking what are they doing and keeping track. And then when someone contacted me and said, look, Sam Woodward is a part of Atomoff. And that's when I thought, right, this is like their fifth murder. And I've got this information. this kid says that he's a part of it. He says he's a national socialist.

So I thought now is the time to kind of try and write a little bit on them. And it got to the point where I was waiting for editors at various other publications because I'm freelance, so I was waiting for the editors. And I just thought, you know what, this is someone else going to scoop me on this. I can't be bothered. So I just put all the information out on Twitter. And that really blew up. And then that's when ProPublica contacted me and said, hey, we want to do an investigation.

Like, will you come and work with us and show us what you've got? And yeah, and it just went from there. Let's get into some of the weird occult and ideological stuff here, because I think this aspect of it is super fascinating and kind of underreported. If you go on Gab or you ask some of the other alt-right guys, Gab is like an alternative Twitter for the audience. You ask Andrew Anglin, who runs the Daily Stormer about Adam Woff, and they will tell you that these guys are alt-right posers and that they're actually a satanic cult. Unfortunately, a lot of that information didn't make it into the ProPublica piece. So I wanted it to be in there. I thought it was important, but I get it.

They kind of wanted to focus more on the violence and the San Woodward case. But yeah, so what we found out, whilst we were going through it, all of a sudden there was a kid from Atamoffen who split from them initially, and he was called Vex. That was his username, Azadius. So this guy, Vex, split from them, and he started to post up loads of information and inner workings of the chats of what Denton, and Caleb Cole, he was his alias as Kimeer.

Excuse me, he's like the right-hand man, I guess, of Denton. And some others, a guy called Ted Bundy was another one, so they have all these weird aliases. Anyway, he started posting up their chats, and it became very clear that these guys were into some kind of satanic, far-right kind of vibe, you know? And these, you know, the aliases they all have, if you look at it, kind of tied into it.

And anyway, so this one guy split, he started exposing it, and then other Atomwaffean guys looked at this evidence and started to be like, hang on, this is weird. Now, this is what really got me. I found this really interesting because for about five or six years now, I've been looking into a group called The Order of Nine Angles, which is a kind of an umbrella term for far right, a far right satanic ideology.

Now, it's what they call like left-hand path, Satanism. So it's not, you know, kind of this lavei Satanism, which is basically like edgy atheism. Like left-hand path is they believe in demons, they believe in, you know, and the 09A, the Order of Nine Angles even preach an idea of culling, which means, you know, weak people should be killed. There's, you know, the kind of myth that if you want to be in the group,

you have to sleep for 40 nights in the forest, this kind of stuff. And it started in England, I think in the 70s or the 80s. And so I've been following that, and I recognize their symbol. And all of a sudden their symbols started popping up when this guy vex on Atomoff and started exposing Denton's kind of satanic links. I couldn't believe it. I said, no way, this is incredible. because, you know, I've been following this for years just out of interest.

And it looks like finally, you know, some kind of group is actually trying to do what the Order of Nine Angles is preaching. So that really, I don't know, that really struck me. So technically it is actually true what that lunatic Anglin is saying that Atom often became this far right neo-Nazi satanic group because rape or Denton at the top believes in all of this, you know, and he's admitted it. He said, yeah, I am a Satanist. So what, you know, they believe in kind of, the idea of. is, Atomov is meant to be no degeneracy, as they call it. And believing in Satanism and all this, I guess for those guys, is degeneracy. So that's where the splits happened.

And that happened whilst our investigation was going. I know a lot of them Atomoff and guys think that we got our information from this guy vex. It's not true. I've never even spoken to the guy. But that happened whilst our investigation was going on. So it's quite interesting to just watch that from the sideline and see them kind of destroy themselves, if you like. But yeah, it's definitely quite a big part of it. Well, and another thing that's interesting about the Order of the Nine Angles part is that in some of their writings,

they tell adherence to infiltrate fringe militant groups and push them towards violence, correct? Exactly. So I think that's what really got a lot of the original members, if you want, of Atomoffen, quite shaken. Because when this Vex started saying, look, you know, rape, Denton, he believes in the the Order of Nine Angles and the guy says yes and Kimeyer says yes we do and then he started posting their beliefs there's a big audio chat where they're arguing

in a Discord about it and he says well look the thing the Order of Nine Angles says is infiltrate far right groups to kind of co-op them and take over and I guess that is what they believe Denton has done and the Order of Nine Angles

in England has been linked to violence correct kind of so the Order of Nine Angles is believed to be started by a guy called David Mayatt. Now he in the 80s, I think even as early as the 70s, was a very, very militant neo-Nazi. He was a part of some of the kind of toughest skinhead group, but he wasn't himself. He was kind of a spiritual, intellectual kind of guy from Yorkshire who just happened to believe in the most disgusting neo-Nazi violence you could think of. And then he ended up becoming a militant Muslim. So he, he,

converted to Islam, became like this militant jihadist, and then he came out of that and fell into this weird occult thing that he now calls the mystical way, which, I don't know, you know, it's kind of out there. But people believe that David Mayat is the guy behind the alias of Anton Long, which is, you know, the kind of writings of the Order of Nine Angles are all by Anton Long. David Mayotte denies it, but perhaps it wasn't him, but I think he was definitely, you know, quite close to it.

So in that respect, yes, it could be linked to him. violence because he was behind a lot of violence that happened in the UK in them times in regards to the neo-Nazi groups. A lot of people have different aliases and shifting ideologies. Yeah, exactly. And I think the most interesting thing about the kind of satanic link is that it really speaks to, I guess, the kind of generation that these guys come from. You know, most of them are like 17, 18, up to about 25, somewhat older. But they're this kind of generation and they believe in, you know, nihilism. They want the most extreme. They can get. yet, so that's why Atamoffin became the most extreme Nazis. And I guess the most extreme

Nazism wasn't even enough for some of them. So they're now like extreme Nazi Satanists who follow the Order of Nine Angles, you know, they're just pushing it and pushing it and pushing it as much as they can get, which is kind of hilarious in a way if it wasn't for all this, you know, terrible things like the murders that have happened at the hands of Atomoffon, allegedly. Right. And this is why Siege, James Mason's siege, appeals to them. I guess, let's talk about that book just a little bit more. Like what's what's in there? Why is that important to them?

So Siege, yeah, that's a good point. I've read Siege. I read it twice. It's massive. I read it twice. I wanted to be kind of, I don't know about it. I wish I hadn't read it. It's insane, to be honest.

Like, the whole thing's mad. And to give you an idea of how extreme it is, I always cite this one line in it. I was reading it, and it really kind of, it shot me when I read it. And so James Mason was friendly with Charles Manson, the late Charles Manson, and the guy that ran the Manson family.

So he was friends with him. And when he's talking about the Sharon Tate murders, he has this horrible line where he basically defends the murder of Sharon Tate's unborn baby, which I believe was cut from the womb or stabbed while she was dying, like really horrific. And James Mason says, well, you know, it was after all a Jew, as if to say, well, it doesn't matter. You know, that's how extreme it is.

He's literally defending the killing of an unborn child. So this guy is about as extreme as you can. get. And siege is all about, well, literally laying siege to the land, you know, destroying the system, as it were. They always refer to the system, the system, the system, you know, they have to destroy the system. And he believes that, you know, the only way to do that is through violence, lone wolf attacks. And Atom often believe that too, you know, they believe that politics is absolutely useless. I think a lot of young people feel like that, you know, they don't feel like there to talk to them, they don't feel accounted for. I think you get this, you know, hugely kind of,

especially in America, both sides are extremely toxic. Nobody wants to talk. And unfortunately, you know, you get these groups like Atomoff and do spring up because they want something more extreme, more definite, you know. And siege gets, you know, siege is about as close as it gets so drawing a very militant line in the sand, I think, when it comes to neo-Nazi ideology. Is James Mason still alive? Yeah.

So James Mason's still alive. He's in his 60s. He's believed to live in Denver. We couldn't get in contact with him. We tried. he sees atom offen guys like they go to his house there's pictures of Denton

with James Mason you know they've got their Nazi regalia on they're zinging all over the place and they're holding up various far right books kind of posing I know that he does a little podcast now over the phone which I believe

Denton and his little circle they make that happen the website siege culture is their website which is where Denton and all the Atomofen those guys put up all of James Mason's stuff. And a little while ago, there was quite an obvious turn. So it was very, you know, national socialist, siege, the aesthetic was there. And then all of a sudden there started being these

kind of more satanic vibes. So there was pictures of Charles Manson. There was an order of nine angles patch in one of the photos. There was like blood dripped on to some kind of paper, which had been seen in some other satanic far right stuff that Denton has linked to. So I think his influence is quite obvious and there's even a picture of James Mason reading this book called Iron Gates which is it's reading you have to read that book apparently to be in Atomoff and I remember I read the first part of it and basically it's about this kind of apocalyptic wasteland and in the first scene a crowd of people tear a infant apart and eat it like that's you know that's required reading for Atomoff and there's a picture of James Mason reading that so

you know you can understand these guys are serious seriously extreme. But there's been, as you've teased earlier in the show, since the satanic stuff about Denton has come out and since the ProPublica piece has come out, there's been a split internally, right? Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, sure. So there's been a split. I think it started when this guy vexed, like I mentioned, he started outing Denton as this

Satanist and Denton and a few other guys, Kimer and some other of his kind of comrades in the top kind of echelon. started to say, yeah, we are Satanist, kind of so what? Like, I don't care about this. I don't care about that. You know, we don't believe in, I think his argument was like, we don't believe in certain standards of morality. That's why we're Satanist or whatever. But it didn't, it didn't really tee up with some of the original Atomofan members and a load of them have left. They departed because they didn't want to be a part of this kind of satanic circle. And then a lot of these

members have formed their own group. Now, I don't think they have a name yet, but they have started a website called fashcast.org. So it's very obvious. If you, look at it, it has a lot of the old atom waffin aesthetic, it just doesn't mention atom wapen, and there's no kind of, you know, satanic imagery. So they've split now. I have no idea what Atomwaffe are doing now. I don't know if, you know, Denton and those guys will just scuttle it and start something else, but they've been incredibly quiet.

There's a group in the UK called System Resistance Network, and for a while even they were starting themselves as the kind of UK Atomwaffe, and they released a video recently called Splitting the Atom where they're, like, burning an atom-waffe flag and you know saying they're no longer anything to do with them because of this satanic stuff so yeah it's definitely a big rupture in their ranks now but you know we'll see what happens i mean maybe they'll just vanish now i definitely think the article made a big difference because a lot of them got quite scared and they just kind of vanished i know that but yeah we'll see where it goes

i think maybe denton and them guys might just you know fall into this satanic circle and you know a new atom often will rear his head jake hanrahan Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks very much. Big fun. That's our show for this week. Thank you so much to Jake Hanahan again for sharing that story with us. And thank you so much for listening. War College is me, Matthew Galt, and Jason, Jason Fields.

You can find us on Twitter at War underscore College or on Facebook at Facebook.com forward slash War College podcast. Jason and I've been busy the past month and we've had a lot of fascinating conversations. The next few weeks, you're going to hear from a nuclear anthropologist. learn what happened to the French military after World War I and get an update on Russia from a friend of the show Mark Galiati. As always, we appreciate your support. If you like us, please rate us on iTunes.

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